"about misleading journalism"

I have some thing about Huffington Post. I kind of like it, but I hate it's slipshod journalistic practices. So, it's just like 99% of all American journalism. Today, there was an article about a woman who moved to Charlotte, NC and found the local Occupy Wallstreet movement. OK, but,

“Jason Cherkis, or whoever wrote the front page headline to his article, and Huffington Post need to mature a bit journalistically. On the front page is a picture of a very serious, accusatory-looking President Obama paired with the headline, " There's a level of intimidation coming into this." Then, once the article is read you see that Obama did not say these words nor is he a focus of the article. By the time I finished this post I see the article has been moved to the Politics page. Whatever. The point is that Huffington Post needs to match pictures and headlines with the article since it is obvious HP wants to be taken seriously.” That was the comment I left on HP.

It's not so new, this hit or miss journalism. I had the wonderful life experiences of working in both "old-style" radio and "old-style" newspaper journalism. I was a proofreader for the Amarillo Globe News back around 1966-67. One night I wandered over to the teletype room and saw a series of pictures with captions from the Associated Press. The pictures showed an American GI in Viet Nam interrogating a suspected Viet Cong captive. The first several pictures showed a calm scene of the two men with captions like, "GI questions Viet Cong suspect." There was a picture captioned, "GI offers water to Viet Cong suspect," accompanied by a shot of the GI offering his canteen. Then came the shocker - the "suspect" was restrained on the ground, a handkerchief over his face, and the GI was pouring water from the canteen onto the handkerchief! He was waterboarding the man! But, back then we didn't know the term waterboarding. So, any newspaper could show either the entire series or simply pick and choose. The Amarillo Globe News only ran the picture of the offer of water.

And to think how far we have fallen in journalistic practices when we were already so low!

Well, gosh, two can play at this game click here to see the fantastic Cher promoting none other than yours truly (what else, there's my name in the background)!